Our 2022 Milwaukee County Teen Book Award winner is Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley! This edge of your seat novel that is full of Ojibwe culture also won our Teen Vote for this year!
This year’s honors go to, The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Flamer by Mike Curato and We Are Not Free by Traci Chee.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Thank you to everyone who promoted, voted, and participated in MCTBA 2022!
Set in the United States during World War II, We Are Not Free by Traci Chee follows a group of American teens of Japanese descent. At first, life is pretty straightforward - the standard dramas of high school, the looming specter of adulthood on the horizon. Then, Japanese-Americans are removed from their homes, forced to leave most of their possessions behind, and relocated to camps. Inside the fence, life is different, but the teens are still teens: they love, they laugh, they dance, they fight, they play sports, they create, and they dream. Their circumstances initially bind them together, but everyone is unique, and eventually different ideas about how to respond to their internment threaten to drive everyone apart. Relocation, imprisonment, and even death are all distinct possibilities. College is one possible way out of the camp, for those who can convince the admissions office they are real Americans; another is the Army, which brings the dangers of fighting Nazis in Europe. Chee uses the voices of fourteen different teens to show many different perspectives, challenges, and circumstances, and weaving all those threads into one narrative highlights the power of community in the face of oppression.
Look what arrived! My Walter Honor and Printz Honor Awards for #WeAreNotFree! Thank you so much to @weneeddiversebooks and YALSA for recognizing this book and this history!
